President Barack Obama and Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny shake hands during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House
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First Lady Michelle Obama speaks to leading parenting bloggers, online influencers, and content creators in the East Room. The First Lady hosted an event attended by about 150 people addressing the health of the nation’s kids as part of the “Let’s Move!” initiative
The Guardian: Arianna Huffington, her website and AOL were on the receiving end of a $105m lawsuit by a group of angry bloggers unhappy that she sold the Huffington Post for $315m without them being paid a penny.
The class action is led by Jonathan Tasini, a writer and trade unionist, who wrote more than 250 posts for Huffington Post on an unpaid basis until he dropped out shortly after the news and comment site was sold to AOL earlier this year.
Tasini complained that “Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation” and said he was bringing the action because “people who create content … have to be compensated” for their efforts.
The complainant and his lawyers estimate about 9,000 people wrote for the Huffington Post on an unpaid basis – and argue that their writings helped contribute about a third of the sale value of the site, the basis of their $105m claim for compensation ….Tasini promised to wage a passionate campaign, saying he was “pissed off and angry” and that he would “picket her home” in his campaign….
More here
AFP: The Huffington Post rebuffed a union boycott call over its practice of using unpaid bloggers, saying most of them are “thrilled to contribute” despite not being paid.
The Newspaper Guild, a union of US media workers with 26,000 members, urged contributors to The Huffington Post earlier this week to stop providing free content to the news and opinion website.
“Just as we would ask writers to stand fast and not cross a physical picket line, we ask that they honor this electronic picket line,” the guild said in a statement. “We feel it is unethical to expect trained and qualified professionals to contribute quality content for nothing”…
The guild urged founder, Arianna Huffington, who sold The Huffington Post to Web company AOL this month for $315 million, “to demonstrate her commitment to the working class she so ardently champions” by paying bloggers.
Mario Ruiz, a Huffington Post spokesman: “…..we make a distinction between our newsroom staffers and our group bloggers - most of whom are not professional writers but come from all walks of life. The vast majority of our bloggers are thrilled to contribute and we’re thrilled to have them.”
Full article here
Arianna Huffington with her good buddy Darrell Issa in Las Vegas
The Wrap: Arianna Huffington scoffed at a group of unpaid Huffington Post contributors that announced on Wednesday they would stop contributing content to the site, weeks after its $315 million sale to AOL was announced.
Huffington, speaking alongside AOL chief Tim Armstrong at PaidContent’s 2011 Conference in New York, dismissed the notion that all bloggers should be paid, given the wide platform HuffPo gives them.
She argued that blogging on the Huffington Post is equivalent to going on Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart or the “Today” show to promote their ideas.
And, she said, there are plenty of people willing to take their place if they do. “The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”
The controversy arose after writers for the websites ArtScene and Visual Art Source , which had been contributing content to the Huffington Post for free since 2010, refuse to contribute additional material to the site unless they got paid. They are asking for a pay schedule and requesting that promotional material no longer be published alongside editorial content.
Full article here
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